‘Policies that Fail – Words that Succeed’: The Politics of Accessible Housing in Australia

This paper seeks to contribute to the debate over the efficacy of voluntary agreements versus regulation, and uses a study of the Livable Housing Design initiative to deliver voluntarily new‐built accessible housing in Australia. We first probe why regulation has become such a significant component of government policy making, and then ask why political campaigns focus on this issue as a strategy for reform. We refer to research by disability activists, which claims that the voluntary approach has failed and regulation is necessary. Amongst our conclusions are: (1) that the disjuncture between policy rhetoric and outcome can be attributed to the power of lobbyists, reliance on the private market to address inequality, and antipathy to regulatory enforcement; and (2) that there is a need for greater interrogation of the language deployed in policy texts to identify whether they are crafted to maintain the government's legitimacy or to deliver purposeful change.     

Growing numbers,growing influence? A comparative study of policy congruence between parliaments and citizens of immigrant origin

A large set of research argues that policy responsiveness towards excluded societal factions such as minorities of immigrant origin improves through the presence of group members in parliaments because they bring forward different perspectives during parliamentary debates. This article challenges the straightforwardness of this relationship by demonstrating that the ability of legislators with immigrant backgrounds to shift the parliamentary agenda closer to the ideal points of citizens of foreign descent is conditional on two factors. First, representatives of immigrant origin need incentives to cultivate a personal vote, and second, their overall proportion of parliamentary seats has to remain rather marginal to influence the policy positions of the majority of representatives. The article's findings thus stress the importance of studying the contextual factors that moderate the relationship between group belonging and the capacity to promote group interests. Empirical evidence from nine European Democracies between 2002 and 2014 substantiates this argument – so that the analysis constitutes the first cross‐country comparison in a research field that has so far been dominated by single country studies. By using policy congruence as a measure for responsiveness, this article shifts the focal point from individual representatives’ attempts to promote the interests of citizens with immigrant backgrounds towards effectiveness of these endeavours.     

In Search of Society? The Limitations of Citizen‐Centred Governance

Democratic governments have spent much of the last two decades attempting to recalibrate their governance systems around a single focal entity: the citizen. The all‐pervasive rhetoric of citizen‐centred governance has seen policies conceived, delivered and evaluated in terms of the satisfaction levels achieved by individual ‘citizens’. This article argues that by disaggregating societal interests down to the smallest available individual unit – the citizen – policy makers have created unrealistic expectations of individual participation, leading to public distrust when ‘citizen‐centred’ rhetoric does not match reality. Simultaneously, the focus on individual outcomes has narrowed the policy‐making gaze away from wider society‐level measures that could create more robust policy options in the face of ‘hard choices.’ The result – paradoxically – is that the more government focuses on pleasing the individual citizen, the less trusting those citizens are of government's ability to deliver meaningful outcomes.     

Xenophobic Rhetoric and Its Political Effects on Immigrants and Their Co‐Ethnics

Though political scientists generally understand the origins of native‐born reactions to foreigners, less is known about how anti‐immigrant contexts trigger a political response within immigrant groups. I address this question by studying the connection between xenophobic rhetoric and Latino politics. I claim that xenophobic rhetoric raises the salience of ethnic identity and impugns its worth. This identity threat leads high‐identifying group members to engage in political efforts that assert their group's positive value, whereas low identifiers shun political opportunities to bolster their group's devaluation. I test these claims with an experiment embedded in a nationally representative opinion survey of Latino adults. In light of xenophobic rhetoric, I find that relative to low identifiers, high‐identifying Latinos become less politically trusting, more ethnocentric, and increasingly supportive of policies that emphasize ingroup pride. These results clarify xenophobic rhetoric's role in amplifying the influence of ethnic identity on immigrant politics.     

Perceptions of Immigrant Threat,American Identity,and Vote Choice in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

Among the central tenets of social identity theory are the arguments that individuals’ attitudes and behavior are shaped by (1) perceptions of threat by out-groups toward individuals’ in-group(s) and (2) the strength of individuals’ identification with the in-group perceived to be under threat. In this paper we explore how American identity and Americans’ perceptions of immigrant threat work together to shape their vote choices in the 2016 presidential election. With the presidential campaign of Donald Trump characterized by strong rhetoric that emphasized immigrant threat and American identity themes, we suggest that the effects of immigrant threat perceptions are amplified by individuals’ American identity, with those who have a strong American identity more likely to translate immigrant threat perceptions into support for Trump than those with weaker levels of American identity. Moreover, we consider whether the effects of American identity on vote choice are activated and moderated by individuals’ perceptions of immigrant threat. Using data from the 2016 American National Election Study, we find that the effects of immigrant threat perceptions and American identity on vote choice are magnified by each other: the effects of immigrant threat perceptions are enhanced among individuals with a strong American identity, and the effects of American identity are activated and magnified by perceptions of immigrant threat.

     

Spillover Effects: Immigrant Policing and Government Skepticism in Matters of Health for Latinos

To what extent do people become less trusting of the government under threatening policy contexts? The authors find evidence that Secure Communities, a bureaucratic program that enhances immigrant policing through collaboration between local law and immigration enforcement agencies, spurs mistrust among Latinos but not non‐Latinos. This article focuses on the politics of immigration and health, two issue areas marked by large‐scale bureaucratic developments over the last 50 years. The authors argue that a major consequence of expanding immigrant policing is its trickle‐down effect on how individuals view public institutions charged with the provision of public goods, such as health information. The results indicate that Latinos in locales where immigrant policing is most intense express lower levels of trust in government as a source of health information. Through a policy feedback lens, the findings suggest that the state's deployment of immigrant policing conveys more widespread lessons about the trustworthiness of government .     

When school meets the Other: intercultural policies in the Basque inclusive school

ABSTRACT

Gatti, Irazuzta and Martinez address the intercultural public policies implemented in the education system of the Autonomous Region of the Basque Country (Spain). Focusing on the education system allows them to reconstruct the historicity of identity-alterity production in a region in which language has been central for the establishment of ethnic frontiers. More specifically, they examine the implementation of these policies in three pre-school and primary educational institutions in a multicultural neighbourhood of the city of Bilbao. They look at Euskara—the Basque language—as a key element of the us-them distinction. The various education models regarding language and the teaching in/of Euskara or Spanish pave the way for the specialization and spatialization of the schools analysed. ‘Integration’ policies are implemented in ethnically marked schools only, based on a rhetoric of interculturality that assumes that any ‘racial or ethnic discrimination’ can be overcome through knowledge of the Other. Moreover, the assessment of public policies through ‘interculturality figures and best practice’ developed to address the so-called ‘immigration issue’ promotes a protectionist intervention on behalf of the assumed social vulnerabilities of immigrant schoolchildren and their families, which are read as ‘problematic characteristics’. The article argues that, as a result of the approach based on the social conditions of immigrant children and their families in the Basque Country, the race issue evaporates.     

International Organizations in Transfer of Infectious Diseases: Iterative Loops of Adoption, Adaptation, and Marketing

Over the past few years increasing attention has been given to the role of international organizations in the diffusion of policy ideas and promotion of particular macro-level policies. Much of the attention has been on the ideological driving forces behind such policies, and on the extent to which the policies are externally imposed. There has been limited discussion on the bread-and-butter, technical policies of international organizations, and how they devise, adopt, adapt, and then promote what come to be seen as policies of global "best practice." This paper seeks to redress this gap by looking at the process of transfer of two infectious disease policies between international and national levels. It demonstrates that international organizations play different roles in policy transfer at particular stages in the process. The paper suggests that health policy transfer is a long adaptive process, made up of several iterative loops, as research and clinical practices developed in one or more countries are adopted, adapted, and taken up by international organizations which then mobilize support for particular policies, market, and promote them. Assumptions that new ideas about policies flow "rationally" into existing decision making are challenged by the processes analyzed here. Policy transfer, given the experience of these infectious diseases policies, goes through separate, "bottom-up," research-oriented, and "top-down" marketing-oriented loops. Individuals and different configurations of networks play key roles linking these loops. In the process, complex, context-specific policies are repackaged into simplified guidelines for global best practice, leading to considerable contestation within the policy networks.     

The power of “small business” as pending narrative: an ideograph in UK politics 2004–2013

This paper explores utilisation of the term small business in contemporary politics in the United Kingdom. First, the policy and practice implications of the term small business are examined, through the lens of political rhetoric. Use of the term over the period from 2004 to 2013 is examined, drawing upon the DataArt Guardian NewsTraces platform as both a method of initially visualising an overall pattern of the term’s use during the 10-year period, and a medium for facilitating data collection for analysis. The research question is: how is the term “small business” used in political rhetoric in the UK, in the identification of policy problems and solutions, and the creation of pending narrative? It is determined that the term small business is an ideograph with different and often competing meanings for various interest groups, and suffers from serious imprecision despite policy efforts which strive for legitimacy. Even with spikes in use reflecting election cycles and periods of economic stress, the term’s power is in its mutable but appealing vagueness, and its enduring quality as pending narrative. This leaves open obvious questions of both policy efficacy and the sufficiency of ideographic-laced rhetoric as a substitute for meaningful policy.     

Unravelling the ‘devolution paradox’: Citizen preferences for self-rule and for shared rule

Recent survey research has revealed a ‘devolution paradox’: some citizens who favour stronger regional governments inconsistently desire policy uniformity across regions and state-wide intervention in policy provision. It is argued and empirically shown that preferences for regional authority can be broken down into preferences for self-rule – that is, for autonomy for the region – and for shared rule – that is, for collaboration between regional and national governments. Drawing upon the International Constitutional Values Survey, which includes 4,930 respondents from 142 regions in eight countries, it is also shown that preferences for self-rule and shared rule have different impacts. Preferences for self-rule translate into a preference for regional reform that strengthens regional autonomy, whereas preferences for shared rule drive preferences for fiscal transfers from richer to poorer regions. These results are important because they can explain why citizens who are in favour of more regional authority may support an apparently ‘paradoxical’ set of policy outcomes.     

The Power of Money: Global Capital and Policy Choices in Developing Countries

Extant studies of the impact that international phenomena have on policy choices, and those focused on the political economy of exchange-rate regimes in particular, are incomplete because they do not consider the effect that reliance on global capital has on the policy preferences of domestic groups. Consequently, they cannot explain why some newly emerging market countries pursue fixed exchange regimes under political and economic conditions—such as recently completed elections, uncompetitive export sectors, and poor national economic performance—in which others have altered their policies. I argue that reliance on different types of foreign capital generates distinct capital-specific policy preferences. Furthermore, rather than simply mimicking the preferences of foreign investors, domestic groups are likely to promote policies that reduce their capital-specific risks and vulnerabilities. Panel logit models of exchange-rate regimes in emerging market countries from 1973 through 2000 demonstrate that higher levels of democracy bolster these effects .     

New Parties: Game Changers or ‘Much Ado About Nothing'?

This article is about the new parties that competed at the Danish parliamentary election of 2019. It addresses three key questions: why did they emerge, what types of parties were they and what impact did they have on Danish party politics. We can identify the causes for their emergence and participation in interplay of relatively lenient rules for party registration, personal ambition, recent events – particularly the Syrian crisis and arrival of refugees – as well as anti-establishment sentiments on the political right. The three new parties shared salient characteristics: they had dominant leaders, were genuinely new, had extraparliamentary origins and were independent of societal organizations. In terms of effects on the party system, the main impact was during the campaign where the strongly anti-immigration agenda proposed by two of the parties dominated the conversation and appeared to cause some movement by established parties in a more immigrant friendly direction. Only one of the far right parties won seats in parliament and its prospects of wielding influence on policy with a Socialdemocratic government are slim.     

Governance by Proxy: A Comparative Policy Analysis of the Mainstreaming of Immigrant Integration Governance

Abstract

This paper assesses mainstreaming as a governance strategy that potentially addresses the call for a more integral governance response to wicked policy problems. Our comparative qualitative policy analysis of the mainstreaming of immigrant integration governance contributes to the governance and mainstreaming literature by emphasizing the importance of strong horizontal and vertical coordination mechanisms and the distinction between universal and proxy targeting in mainstreaming. Although policy programmes indeed seem to broaden to a universal mainstreamed approach, in practice they often operate by “proxy”. Furthermore, horizontal coordination structures tend to be weak or not in place at all, again obstructing the embedding of immigrant integration as a mainstreamed cross-cutting governance issue.     

Voters' Perceptions of Policy Convergence and the Short‐term Opportunities of Anti‐immigrant Parties: Examples from Sweden

In contrast to previous studies on the political opportunity structures of anti‐immigrant parties, this article argues that voters’ perceptions of policy convergence between mainstream alternatives affect their short‐term propensity for supporting such partisan challengers. Drawing upon leading research in the field, two hypotheses about voters’ perceptions of policy convergence, in two policy areas (economic redistribution and immigration), are presented. The main findings in the article suggest that policy convergence between mainstream parties has a more immediate impact on the electorate than commonly recognised. Using unique data from Sweden, the article shows that perceived convergence between Swedish mainstream parties in the field of immigration policy increases potential support for the anti‐immigrant party, the Sweden Democrats (SD). Yet the results are the opposite when it comes to perceptions of convergence in the field of economic‐distributive policies. In contrast to widespread assumptions, the article thus finds that policy convergence between mainstream parties only appears to create short‐term opportunities for anti‐immigrant parties if it takes place on their own policy turf. These results indicate, in other words, that the potential electorate of the SD – which is a wider group than hard‐core xenophobes – is largely driven by preferences about immigration policy, rather than the short‐term urge to protest against mainstream parties. The article, therefore, concludes that the cordon sanitaire to isolate the SD in Sweden – which is underpinned by de facto convergence between mainstream parties on immigration policy – could improve, and is unlikely to curb, the short‐term electoral opportunities of this party.     

The war on cartels and the social meaning of deterrence

The global war on cartels has had much success in introducing tough sanctions for cartel conduct, such as price fixing and market sharing. The policy rhetoric justifying criminalization assumes that compliance can be induced through deterrence. This, in turn, assumes that business people know about the law, believe that they are likely to be caught and face enforcement action and jail if they break the law, and calculate that they should comply. This paper problematizes these policy assumptions using evidence from a survey of a random sample of Australian business people and in‐depth interviews with 25 cartelists. This paper argues that business people's knowledge about the law is less important than their relationship with (or distance from) the law. Corporate elites see themselves as intimate with the law and, therefore, able to strategically “play” the law; while small business people and managers lower down the corporate hierarchy see themselves as “innocent” of any knowledge of the law. The impact of a policy of increased sanctions for misconduct cannot be understood solely in terms of marginal difference in aggregate levels of deterrence. It must also be understood in terms of how it interacts with people's experience of the law to create and maintain or contest and destabilize social segmentation and inequality.     

An Underappreciated Dimension of Human Trafficking: Battered and Trafficked Women and Public Policy

Both domestic violence and trafficking in humans pose serious problems worldwide. However, there are differences in the ways in which battered immigrant women and trafficked immigrant women are responded to by governmental agencies in Greece and in the USA. Trafficking in humans has been securitized, that is, framed as an issue linked to international security risk. As such, countries that do not take legal action to stop human trafficking could face US sanctions such as loss of United States military and economic assistance. Under significant international pressure, Greece, since 2002, passed a law that criminalized trafficking in humans and took necessary steps for providing protection and assistance to trafficked victims. Nevertheless, domestic violence and battered women remain silent in Greek society, and the availability of services to victims of domestic violence has eroded. We argue that, due to different issue framing of victims of trafficking and battered women, the connection of trafficking in humans to national security fosters different legal protection outcomes. The comparison of battered immigrant women and trafficked victims between Greece and the USA reveals significant differences in protection of battered immigrant women in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) area. This article elucidates why there are public policy differences within OECD states that all grant a priority to prevention of human trafficking.     

What about non-diffusion? The effect of competitiveness in policy-comparative diffusion research

Many scholars have convincingly shown that policies diffuse between national and sub-national entities for several different reasons. Although diffusion processes are empirically proven, we witness two shortcomings in the discussion: First, there is a lack of comparative research across policy areas. Second, the question of why diffusion might not occur in a certain domain is under-theorized and lacks an empirical test. By comparing the rationale behind diffusion processes in two policy domains??energy policy and locational policy??this paper shows that two aspects matter for diffusion processes: First is the observability of policy measures, that is, how easily things can be observed by others; second is the competitiveness of the policy domain. If policy measures can be hidden easily and the policy domain is highly competitive, policy diffusion is very unlikely to happen. Therefore, we seek the integration of these two aspects in prospective diffusion research.     

Defending popular sovereignty: discursive conflict in French and Swedish parliamentary debates on immigrant voting rights (1968-2017)

ABSTRACT

Through a discourse analysis of French and Swedish legislative debates from 1968 to 2017, this article examines how actors challenge and reinforce dominant ideas about the link between nationality and political rights. We argue that the broader political culture influences which discursive strategies – or ‘frames’ – are more likely to structure parliamentary debates in different national contexts. However, our analysis also shows that legislators sometimes develop new discursive frames in which they reinterpret dominant norms to make them consistent with their views. Through this incremental process of reinterpretation and reformulation of dominant ideas, debates over non-citizen voting rights have chipped away at the link between nationality and political rights. Our findings suggest that initiatives to enfranchise non-citizens trigger lower levels of conflict when they can be framed as a policy tool for immigrant integration rather than as a matter of popular sovereignty.     

Enlarging the Euro Area: External Empowerment and Domestic Transformation in East Central Europe

Immigrants and their descendants are becoming increasingly visible in Germany’s political life. What determines immigrant political incorporation into parliamentary positions over time and in specific contexts? The article focuses on the regional parliaments of Germany’s 16 states. A comparative analysis enables us to specify whether, how and under what conditions factors thought to impact levels of immigrant representation are indeed influential and how they interact with local and situational conditions. The article first outlines immigrant representation in Germany’s states over time. It then discusses several possible explanations for the striking variation between states. Rather than one key factor, it is found that interactions between demographic, institutional, cultural and political conditions account for different levels of immigrant representation in Germany’s state parliaments.     

Civil Servants, Economic Ideas, and Economic Policies: Lessons from Italy

Building on theoretically oriented and empirically grounded research on two key macroeconomic institutions in Italy, this article explains how and why civil servants can engineer major policy changes, making a difference in a country's trajectory. Italy provides a challenging testing ground for this kind of analysis, as it is generally portrayed as a highly politicized system in which political parties and politicians fully control public policies. Three general lessons can be learned, the first being that the role of civil servants in changing modes of economic governance depends on the resources that they master in the system in which they operate. "Intangible assets" are of primary importance in complex and perceived technical policies, such as monetary and exchange rate policy, which have high potential for "technocratic capture." Second, in these policies, certain intangible assets, such as specific bodies of economic knowledge or policy paradigms, have a considerable impact on policy making. Third, besides interactions in international fora, the professional training of civil servants is a mainstream way through which economic policy beliefs circulate and gain currency, laying the foundations for policy shifts. By highlighting the importance of the intangible assets of macroeconomic institutions, this research makes an unorthodox contribution to the primarily economic literature on central bank independence.